Spotlight

Washinton Post: Are Kids Getting More Virtuous?

By many measures, young people today are showing virtues their elders lacked. They have brought delinquency, truancy, promiscuity, alcohol abuse and suicide down to levels unseen in many cases since the 1950s. Rather than coming up with ever more old-fogey complaints, we should be celebrating young people’s good judgment and self-control — and extolling their parents and teachers.

New national data for 2013 show continued declines in child maltreatment, after a one year discontinuity (2012) in which some rates briefly increased. But from 2012 to 2013, sexual abuse declined 4%, physical abuse declined 3%, child maltreat-ment fatalities declined 7% and overall substantiated child mal-treatment declined 1%. Neglect by contrast rose 1%.

Welcome to the Crimes Against Children Research Center

Newly Released:

Prevalence of childhood exposure to violence, crime, and abuse: Results from the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence

More than a third of children and teens 17 and younger experienced a physical assault, primarily at the hands of siblings and peers, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics

Violence against children is a national and international public health and public policy issue. The U.S. Department of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiated in 2008 the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) to provide ongoing estimates of a wide range of violence against youth. Assessments have occurred in three-year intervals in 2011 and now in 2014.

Researcher David Finkelhor, Ph.D., of the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and coauthors analyzed data from the survey for 4,000 children and adolescents (17 and younger) to provide current estimates of exposure to violence, crime and abuse. Survey information was collected in telephone interviews (from August 2013 to April 2014) with caregivers and young people.

Has Someone Threatened to Show or Post Sexual Pictures of You?

The CCRC and Thorn (https://www.wearethorn.org) want to learn more about how some people are misusing technology to extort or blackmail others by threatening to expose sexual images. We hope to find ways to stop these incidents, catch offenders and help the people they target.

If this has happened to you, please help us understand these crimes by taking this survey. You must be between 18 and 25 to participate.

Contrary to popular belief, cyberbullying that starts and stays online is no more emotionally harmful to youngsters than harassment that only occurs in-person and may actually be less disturbing because it’s likelier to be of shorter duration and not involve significant power imbalances, according to a CCRC study published by the American Psychological Association.

Weapon Involvement in the Victimization of Children

Estimates from the Second National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence indicate that more than 17.5 million youth in the United States have been exposed to violence involving a weapon in their lifetimes as witnesses or victims, or more than 1 in 4 children, according to a CCRC paper published in Pediatrics. More than 2 million youth in the United States (1 in 33) have been directly assaulted in incidents where the high lethality risk weapons of guns and knives were used.

Trends in Children's Exposure to Violence, 2003-2011

Rates of violent crime have declined in the United States since the mid-1990s. This decline includes violent crimes, property crimes, and sex crimes. Children may also have benefitted from these trends. For example, rates of physical and sexual abuse substantiated by child protection authorities declined 56% and 63%, respectively, from 1992 to 2011. Violence against youth aged 12 to 17 years, measured by self-report surveys such as the National Crime Victimization Survey, also declined substantially from the mid-1990s onward. Surveys of bullying and school violence have shown similar large drops.

In the News

CNN Commentary: Child prostitution and Trafficking: Sex ring sting….

Kudos to the FBI and its partners for bringing needed attention to the neglected problem of juveniles engaged in prostitution. On Monday, they announced the results of Operation Cross Country, a coordinated multi-agency campaign in which 150 alleged pimps were arrested in a three-day sweep in 76 cities. But it's a complex problem requiring a lot more than the arrest of pimps.

The notion of a stranger grabbing a child off the street occupies a prominent place in popular fears. But the missing-children cases that rise to the level of news tend to distort perceptions of how often children go missing and why. It’s important to sort out the myth and reality about missing kids.